Bridgerton star Simone Ashley recently posted a pool photo for her fans on Instagram, as seen below.
A huge bombshell off the course of Bridgerton has been making the rounds in all of pop culture. The role of Francesca, of the Bridgerton bunch, has been recast. As many fans know, Ruby Stokes plays Francesca in seasons one and two, but in those seasons, Francesca is absent for most of the time. In season one, it is explained to watchers that she is away and studying pianoforte with an aunt. Then we are told in season two that she’s just not around most of the time. In reality, Stokes has been cast in a leading role in another Netflix show, Lockwood & Co., and was filming that show through the summer of 2021, competing with Bridgerton season two’s production which would explain a lot of the holes in the story. Since she is now a full-fledged cast member of Lockwood, but only appearing rarely on Bridgerton, Lockwood stole the deal with ease and Stokes will continue working on that show (assuming it gets more than one season, it’s a much harsher landscape at Netflix these days).
As for the role of Francesca, she will now be played by Hannah Dodd, who worked on Harlots and can currently be seen in Netflix’s tawdry Anatomy of a Scandal. This all should ensure that Francesca should have a bigger role to play going forward, as her story covers a significant time jump in the lives of the Bridgertons, beginning the 1810s, but not concluding until the mid-1820s, when most of the middle Bridgerton siblings have their romantic adventures (for a Regency romance, only three of the eight siblings have their love stories in the actual Regency era). We will see how this continues to play out as this will be a big step for the character and we wonder how fans will react to the recasting.
